What I did on my winter holiday, part III a: Bosch in person
I forgot to add this item to my report about the Memling in SintJans Museum:
I saw my first Bosch painting in person. It's a triptych, on loan to the Memling in St Jans while something else of theirs is on tour.
It's a scene of the rapture, or of the end times when the holy head for heaven (one side of the triptych) while the lost are eaten, tortured, tormented and generally turned into sadistic playthings.
Bosch always looks modern to me, the way the giant bugs/creatures swallow tiny humans. I wonder if he believed in the hereafter, or if he was simply putting the scariest spin he could on the Bible's stories about heaven and hell. While we tend to think ' he's got to be mad' now, I wonder if he was judged unstable by his contemporaries, or if he was admired?
His macabre visions were serious at the time, compared to the silly take on them (picture a giant foot stomping someone a la Monty Python). Python sees fun and silliness where Bosch seens horror and desperation.
Wikipedia says he was member of a very conservative brotherhood, so he may have been reflecting a fairly demanding and judgemental view of the world that promised a fairly miserable afterlife to the vast majority of humans.
I saw my first Bosch painting in person. It's a triptych, on loan to the Memling in St Jans while something else of theirs is on tour.
It's a scene of the rapture, or of the end times when the holy head for heaven (one side of the triptych) while the lost are eaten, tortured, tormented and generally turned into sadistic playthings.
Bosch always looks modern to me, the way the giant bugs/creatures swallow tiny humans. I wonder if he believed in the hereafter, or if he was simply putting the scariest spin he could on the Bible's stories about heaven and hell. While we tend to think ' he's got to be mad' now, I wonder if he was judged unstable by his contemporaries, or if he was admired?
His macabre visions were serious at the time, compared to the silly take on them (picture a giant foot stomping someone a la Monty Python). Python sees fun and silliness where Bosch seens horror and desperation.
Wikipedia says he was member of a very conservative brotherhood, so he may have been reflecting a fairly demanding and judgemental view of the world that promised a fairly miserable afterlife to the vast majority of humans.